Buy now, or pay more later

Due to the need to comply with the law that states a business with a presence in the state must collect sales tax, for Maryland residents today is the final day of shopping on Amazon tax-free. The opening of a distribution center in Baltimore made the change necessary.

This affects me to a small extent because I’ve been an Amazon Associate site for a number of years. I doubt I would be the one to collect sales tax, but I’m sure my small cut of the action won’t be increased by the extra six percent things on Amazon will cost to Maryland residents. (In fact, government will be making more money than I do in most cases.) In the past, though, Amazon has ended associate programs in states where they collect sales tax, so it’s very possible that this little revenue stream of mine will go away effective tomorrow.  (At the moment, it appears that it will not.) It might be great for people who found a job in one of these Baltimore distribution centers, but those of us who made a little bit of coin in this manner aren’t happy.

On another front, it would be interesting to know how many people with relatives or close friends in Delaware that they visit frequently will be simply slapping their address on the shipping label, although I suppose having a method of payment with a Maryland billing address may bring up the charge as well. Surely we all know someone who went to Delaware to purchase a big-ticket item in order to avoid paying a couple hundred extra dollars in sales tax to Maryland, so I have no doubt people may do the same thing for Amazon. With Delaware being so close and most in this area knowing someone who lives there I would suspect this will become a bit of a trend.

In the meantime, the box on my right sidebar awaits – get while the gettin’s good.

The war over e-books

This particular piece has a little more meaning to me than to most of you. The other day I received an “Important Kindle Request,” which is reprinted at this website. It basically compares the current situation in the e-book market to that of the era paperback books were introduced.

The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.

Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. (Emphasis in original.)

The gist of the story is that Amazon and Hachette, a distributor of e-books, are in a pricing dispute – Amazon thinks they should be cheaper while Hachette releases them for $15-20. That’s for an e-book, folks. We’re not talking the hardcover $30-40 tomes, we’re talking about something which loads to your Kindle or other reading device and takes up negligible space on its hard drive. In essence, to buy the book is to transfer a copy of the file from source to customer – no need for book sellers or trying to predict the market and risking either selling out too quickly or having thousands of unsold books to unload at a reduced price. Instead, supply adequately meets demand.

And volume is king – would I rather sell 1,000 copies of a $14.95 e-book or 100,000 at $4.99? Truthfully, it does no harm for my e-book to sit on their servers, and the hard copies are created as needed.

There was some interesting synchronicity between the arrival of this e-mail and a request to buy an autographed copy of my book. (Yes, I keep a few on hand.) It got me to thinking about book number 2, which has been on the back burner for quite awhile, and what to do about my first e-book.

So what I decided to do about the latter is try and boost its market share by cutting the price in half. Unfortunately, to do so I had to cut my commission half again, for Amazon wouldn’t let me sell below a certain price with full commission – so I have to sell fourfold the number of e-books to make the same amount. But it’s a risk I’ll take to see what the market will do, plus it’s been two years since its release. (That’s hard to believe.)

As for book number two, I make no promises. The idea is there, but I haven’t figured out a particular direction to take it quite yet. It may wait until after the election.

The e-book industry is probably going to see its prices decline, because marketers will likely see this Amazon’s way. Given the amount of material out there, thanks in part to a far more lucrative compensation setup than most authors going the regular route can dream of, there may not be a choice.

Odds and ends number 32

Yes, it’s another edition of those items which deserve a paragraph or three but maybe not a full post.

Let’s begin with a rescheduled event. Originally scheduled for last month, Andy Harris will hold his “healthcare discussion” fundraiser on Wednesday, August 24 at 6 p.m. at the original location. It’s still $50 and you can still contact Cathy Keim at (443) 880-5912 for details.

That may be the last time you have a spare $50 in your pocket, though, since the Maryland General Assembly is spending their summer trying to figure out just how they can squeeze more revenue out of the citizenry. Take this report done by the Maryland Department of Legislative Services.

There’s a couple not-so-obvious things which jumped out at me and were buried in the report. One is the idea of considering those who are online affiliates to a company such as Amazon.com as a presence in the state, necessitating the collection of sales tax. As a website owner who indeed acts as an Amazon.com affiliate (and makes a few pennies off the website in that manner) the last thing I really want to do is collect sales tax. Amazon doesn’t have affiliates in states with such laws, and for good reason.

But notice what South Carolina did – in order to create jobs they waived their requirement, and Tennessee is considering the same. Yes, they would lose sales tax revenue but would presumably make that up and more with increased economic activity. Maryland? Well, I guess they seem to believe that making more taxes will make the state more attractive. Not.

In fact, the Republican Caucus in the House of Delegates continues to point out this fatal flaw:

For years, the House Republican Caucus has offered plan after plan to bring Maryland’s spending in line with revenues and ultimately lower taxes; knowing that real spending cuts, not fantastical numbers games, would ultimately protect the taxpayers of Maryland from another mugging by their government.  We have warned repeatedly against the reliance on federal funds. Real, meaningful spending reductions have not occurred; in fact the budget has grown year after year.  Rather than listening to sound fiscal advice, the Democratic monopoly has chosen instead to demonize anyone who suggests true spending reductions and terrorize the public with tales of apocalyptic calamity should true reductions in government spending happen.

The only “apocalyptic calamity” seems to be the job creation numbers in Maryland, which are dismal to say the least.

But there’s no calamity in the ozone layer, as the EPA fortunately has held off on new, tougher job-killing ozone standards so stringent that even Yellowstone National Park couldn’t qualify. Perhaps a reason why is that Fedzilla couldn’t hide their cooking of the books nor justify the benefits versus the costs.

It’s foolish, though, to believe that this was ever about costs or even public health. It’s about control, and something tells me that well-connected companies could make sweetheart deals with regulators to carve out an exemption or two. In Washington these days you have to pay to play, and the sale of regulations favoring the highest political contributor seems to be in vogue more than ever.

Then again, drug cartels have a lot of money. And in the wake of a deepening protection scandal involving the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico, maybe Gary Johnson and his libertarian ilk is right on this one:

While I certainly disagree with several parts of Gary’s platform, I do believe perhaps it’s time we considered the legalization option. Granted, the cartels may still operate because there are a lot of other illegal substances out there but I’m not so sure the benefits of the War on Drugs outweigh the costs. It’s a little surprising that Barack Obama hasn’t pushed for this himself given past history – in theory, the act of drug possession could have landed him in jail in some jurisdictions.

Imagine how things may have turned out had that happened. (Oh wait, I’m undercutting my own argument!)

I must say, though, that Gary is perhaps the most blogger-friendly candidate out there. If only Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann were as accomodating… *sigh*

By the way, I didn’t forget that I’m still in the midst of grading candidates. I’ve just been a little busy lately and now I have an issue with the laptop where all those text files are, so it’s temporarily out of commission.

And now for something completely different.

I was asked by a nice lady to include her website as one of my links.

Now this sort of thing happens on occasion as spam e-mail and this particular message was in that folder as well. A lot of the time it’s one of those “we should trade links” sort of things to cover as an advertisement for a poker or porn website. But I checked out the site in question and it’s definitely legit – and it’s striking in the amount of photography used, along with the fact that Kathy covers an area that I don’t often get to for this gig – up around St. Michaels (also known as “the town that fooled the British.”) So dig in and enjoy.